Reflections from History and Faith: Nancy Green — In remembrance

By Jeff Olson

I was so very blessed as a child in many ways. Actually… more ways than I even remember now. Some ways, though, I can still remember quite distinctly. One of those was my mother’s cooking and a part of that was her pancakes. She usually made those from scratch, but sometimes not.

When not, she would use a pancake mix, though it wasn’t nearly as good as those she made from scratch. Of course, the pancake syrup was always storebought, but we had our favorite of that as well.

I still enjoy pancakes every now and again, especially covered in butter and syrup. I have sometimes wondered whatever happened to those old familiar boxes and bottles with a smiling face of a lady on them. I don’t see the face on the store shelves anymore, but I still see the product. Until just recently, I never thought much about it, but for some reason that face came to mind as I was enjoying a breakfast of pancakes. I decided to take a journey back in time and find out whose face it was looking at me all those years at the breakfast table.

Come to find out, that lady was born into slavery in 1834 in Mount Sterling, Kentucky. Her name was Nancy Green, and she was a Black storyteller, cook and missionary.

After the Civil War, she moved to a deeply divided Chicago, becoming a strong voice at Olivet Baptist Church, the city’s oldest Black congregation. This church was well known for its work to protect those who had escaped slavery, who arrived in Chicago because there were many slave catchers in Chicago still pursuing people who were of African descent.

In 1888, newspaper editor Chris Rutt and his business partner Charles Underwood purchased the Pearl Milling Company, with the idea of perfecting a recipe for a self-rising, premixed pancake flour.

According to M. M. Manring, author of “Slave in a Box: The Strange Career of Aunt Jemima,” Rutt and Underwood had much difficulty in branding it. In St. Joseph, Missouri, Rutt happened upon a performance of “Old Aunt Jemima,” a popular minstrel song written by Black musician Billy Kersands in 1875. The song features a mammy, a racial stereotype of the Black female caretaker figure devoted to her white family. This image of Southern hospitality inspired Rutt with an idea to use this image for promoting his product. Rutt and Underwood were unable to sell their new Aunt Jemima breakfast product. They had no distribution network and little understanding of the advertising business. The partners eventually sold their company and the recipe to R.T. Davis, owner of R.T. Davis Milling Company, the largest flour mill in St. Joseph, Missouri.

Davis, having worked in the flour industry for decades, was able to invest the necessary capital in improving the Aunt Jemima recipe, plus he also knew how to successfully market the product. He decided to promote Aunt Jemima pancake mix by creating Aunt Jemima in person. After merging his company with the Pearl Milling Company in 1890, Davis sent a casting call for a gregarious, theatrical Black woman who could cook the pancake mix at big demonstrations. In 1890, Nancy Green, a 59-year-old servant for a Chicago judge, was hired for the role. She became the first and most influential Aunt Jemima.

Dressed as Aunt Jemima, Green appeared at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago beside the “world’s largest flour barrel” (24 feet high), where she operated a pancake-cooking display, sang songs, and told romanticized stories about the Old South. Her exhibition booth drew so many people that special security personnel were assigned to keep the crowds moving.

She appeared at fairs, festivals, flea markets, food shows, and local grocery stores with her arrival heralded by large billboards featuring the caption, “I’se in town, honey.” Green’s engaging personality and talent as a cook for the Walker family, whose children grew up to become Chicago Circuit Judge Charles M. Walker and Dr. Samuel Walker, helped establish a successful promotion of the product.

Columbian Exposition officials proclaimed Nancy Green “Pancake Queen” and she received a medal and certificate from the Expo officials. She was signed to a lifetime contract and traveled on promotional tours all over the United States.

As a result of Nancy’s promotional work, flour sales greatly increased, and the image of pancakes changed immensely. Until she promoted the Aunt Jemima

Self-Rising Pancake Flour Mix, the flour business had been strictly seasonal, with most sales occurring in the winter. People began purchasing and using pancake flour all year around and pancakes evolved from being a strictly breakfast menu item into standard lunch, dinner and late supper fare as well. This huge success was a tribute to Green’s gifts and talents. Her personality was warm and appealing, and her showmanship was exceptional.

Other ladies would model Aunt Jemima over the next 120 years. Green’s personification of Aunt Jemima and the character’s mythology built by advertising executives earned Davis, and later the Quaker Oats Company, great profit. However, there is no evidence that Green ever saw any of that revenue.

In 1910, at age 76, Green was still working as a residential housekeeper, according to the census. Not many people were aware of her role as Aunt Jemima. Green lived with nieces and nephews in Chicago into her old age. She died 100 years ago in August 1923 at age 89, when a car driven by pharmacist Dr. H. S. Seymour collided with a laundry truck and “hurtled” onto the sidewalk where Green was standing.

At the time of her death, she was living with her great-nephew and his wife. She was buried in a pauper’s grave near a wall in the northeast quadrant of Chicago’s Oak Woods Cemetery. Her grave was unmarked and unknown until 2015. Sherry Williams, founder of the Bronzeville Historical Society, spent 15 years uncovering Green’s resting place. Williams received approval from a distant relative of Green’s (Marcus Hayes, Green’s great-greatgreat-nephew) to place a headstone.

Williams reached out to Quaker Oats about whether they would support a monument for Green’s grave. Their corporate response was that Nancy Green and Aunt Jemima aren’t the same — that Aunt Jemima is a fictitious character. The headstone was placed on Sept. 5, 2020.

The R.T. Davis Milling Company was renamed the Aunt Jemima Milling Company in 1913. In 1925, the Quaker Oats Company entered into a contract to purchase the Aunt Jemima brand. For almost a century after Nancy Green’s death, some version of Aunt Jemima’s image would remain on the pancake mix boxes and syrup bottle.

When PepsiCo acquired the Quaker Oats Company and the Aunt Jemima brand in 2001, the company said the brand had “the goal of representing loving moms from diverse backgrounds who want the best for their families.”

Quaker Oats announced in June 2020 that it would remove Aunt Jemima’s image. Along with this, there was also a changing of the brand name. This was decided on the premise that the image was “based on a racial stereotype.” In February 2021, Quaker Oats announced the pancake mix and other products would be renamed “Pearl Milling Company,” an homage to the original mill built in 1888.

The new name and logo began appearing on packages in June 2021. However, there is a small Aunt Jemima label on the pancake mix box and the syrup bottle reminding us of Green’s legacy and days gone by when there was a smiling lady on the label.

In the days and years to come when we sit down to enjoy that stack of pancakes doused in syrup, regardless of the source, I hope we will remember Nancy Green and her role in the history of the pancake and especially its rise to prominence as a staple of the American family table.